Excluded from the Berlin political establishment, courted by the Kremlin. Gerhard Schröder has maneuvered his friendship with Putin far into the sidelines. But he doesn’t want to accept the role of an outlaw.
When Gerhard Schröder celebrated his 70th birthday ten years ago, the ex-chancellor’s world was still somewhat in order. The SPD organized a large reception for him at the Berlin art museum Hamburger Bahnhof. The then SPD leader Sigmar Gabriel called him “one of the most unusual social democratic politicians” in his speech. Honorary citizen Schröder was also celebrated in Hanover’s town hall by 180 guests, led by the then and current Prime Minister Stephan Weil.
When Schröder turns 80 on April 7th, none of this will exist anymore. He himself gave up his honorary citizenship in his hometown of Hanover after proceedings to revoke it were initiated against him. The SPD leadership has broken with its ex-chancellor and no longer even invites him to party conferences, as is actually usual for former chairmen. Even the Schröder coffee cups were banned from the SPD online shop’s range.
The long-time SPD leader (1999 to 2004) and Chancellor (1998 to 2005) maneuvered himself far into the political sidelines because he condemned the Russian invasion of Ukraine as a mistake, but despite his friendship with Russian President Vladimir Putin Russian war crimes and tens of thousands of deaths to this day. He will still celebrate his 80th birthday at the end of April. In the middle of Berlin, of all places, the city in which he is ostracized by the political establishment. As if he wanted to say: Hello, I’m still here and I won’t hide in Hanover.
Steep climb and deep fall
No chancellor in the Federal Republic has fallen as low in public reputation as Schröder after his term in office. But hardly any other politician has had such a distinguished political career before. Schröder grew up as an orphan in very poor circumstances in the Lippe district in northeast North Rhine-Westphalia, joined the SPD at the age of 19, studied law and set himself big goals early on. As early as the 1980s, he is said to have shaken the fence of the Chancellery in what was then the federal capital of Bonn and shouted: “I want to get in here.”
At the end of 1998, after eight years as Prime Minister of Lower Saxony, he became chancellor of the first red-green government at the federal level. Similar to Scholz’s now, his first legislative period was marked by wars. Just five months after being sworn in, Schröder sent German soldiers into combat for the first time since the Second World War. Bundeswehr Tornados took part in the air raids on Belgrade during the Kosovo War. After the terrorist attacks on the USA on September 11, 2001, Schröder did not hesitate to agree to German participation in the military operation in Afghanistan. His “unrestricted solidarity” with the USA only ended with the Iraq invasion. Schröder said no to this war and was re-elected in 2002, not least because of this.
The SPD is still proud of this decision today. However, she had major problems with the social reforms of Agenda 2010, which had already alienated Schröder from his party to some extent. But to this day he doesn’t regret any of the political decisions, he said in an interview with the German Press Agency in his office in Hanover in mid-March. And nothing of what came after.
Lobbyist for Russian companies: “It’s my business”
Shortly after becoming chancellor, he started working as a lobbyist for Russian energy companies. “I was just over 60 when I had to stop. I had to do something and I did – as a lawyer and in other areas,” he says. The fact that as Chancellor you also have responsibility as a representative of your country when not on duty did not deter Schröder from his involvement in Russia. “That’s my business,” he still says defiantly when asked about it. The main thing is that it is not legally vulnerable.
Schröder still works for the majority Russian companies on the two Nord Stream pipelines through the Baltic Sea. For a long time, the SPD was only partially bothered by this. In 2017 – three years after the Russian annexation of Crimea and the start of the war in eastern Ukraine – Schröder spoke at an SPD party conference to support the then leading candidate Martin Schulz. Even when Scholz was sworn in as Chancellor in the Bundestag in December 2021, he was still in the visitors’ gallery.
He justifies his friendship with Putin with pragmatism
The break only came with the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Schröder distanced himself from the war, but not from Putin. In March 2022 – a few weeks after the start of the war – he tried to use his good connections in the Kremlin for a mediation mission that took him to Istanbul for talks with a Ukrainian parliamentarian and then to Moscow. The mission failed.
But Schröder remains convinced that his friendship can help resolve the conflict. “And that’s why I think it would be completely wrong to forget everything that happened between us in politics in the past in terms of positive events. That’s not my style and I don’t do that either,” he confirmed in mid-March. Friendship out of pragmatism is how he tries to justify his relationship with Putin.
Lauterbach: “Unfortunately we have to be ashamed of him today”
He received applause from the Kremlin. As is so often the case, reflexive outrage comes from the SPD. “Today we unfortunately have to be ashamed of him,” wrote Health Minister Karl Lauterbach on X (formerly Twitter). “It no longer has anything to do with the SPD. As a “friend” of Putin, he should simply leave our organization.”
When the topic of Putin comes up, Schröder quickly reacts with irritation or even annoyance. He much prefers to talk about Olaf Scholz and Boris Pistorius, the traffic lights and the SPD – and about himself. His office in a villa in Hanover looks like a Gerhard Schröder museum. Paintings and sculptures by him and his wife Soyeon Schröder-Kim, to whom he has been married for the fifth time since 2018, hang and stand everywhere. During the interview, she sits at the table and films the hour-long conversation with her cell phone.
Adenauer and Merkel behind us – Lafontaine on the desk
Behind his desk hangs a gallery of black-and-white photographs of all former chancellors from Konrad Adenauer to Angela Merkel. On the table is a book by Oskar Lafontaine called “Ami, it’s time to go”. Lafontaine is the other ex-SPD leader who is no longer invited to party conferences. In this case, however, the matter is clearer: the 80-year-old from Saarland himself left the SPD and co-founded a new party, WASG, which later merged into the Left.
The two ex-SPD grandees, who had been silent between them for decades, reconciled last year at a meeting in Merzig, Saarland. A PR coup with which Schröder returned to the German public after a long absence. Since then, he has occasionally been seen with his wife on official occasions. On German Unity Day last year, he went to the ceremony in Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie. He also attended the funeral service for football legend Franz Beckenbauer in Munich in January.
Oatmeal diet for a new image
The ex-chancellor is working on his image. His wife put him on a diet. Instead of currywurst and beer like before, we now have fruit, oatmeal and non-alcoholic rosé wine for dinner at home. Schröder has been giving interviews again since last fall. He even had the NDR film a documentary about him, took the camera team with him to the golf course and on a trip to China, where he is still courted as in Russia.
What is all this supposed to happen now? A comeback as an elder statesman giving advice from the sidelines? Schröder initially denies this. He went into hiding “for a while for good reasons” and in principle he doesn’t want to change that. “But once you’ve worked in the public eye in the way I did, you can’t completely escape it.” So he wants to get involved again somehow. But this should be done in a way “that means my party, which is having a hard enough time at the moment – there’s no denying that – doesn’t get into additional trouble,” emphasizes Schröder
Praise for Scholz that only helps his opponents
He is probably very aware that it doesn’t work that way. His praise for Chancellor Scholz’s no to the delivery of Taurus cruise missiles to Ukraine was exploited by the Chancellor’s opponents on this issue. And this in a situation in which not only the traffic light coalition, but also the SPD are struggling with what to do next in Ukraine.
Schröder knows that his call for negotiations is touching a nerve in his party. This is also why he sees himself “in the middle of social democracy.” Such statements are a deliberate provocation to the party leadership. “You know that I don’t have a particularly close relationship with the party leadership, with the current one. But you don’t have to have one in order to remain a Social Democrat.”
In the “Süddeutsche Zeitung” he becomes even clearer shortly before his birthday. “What really makes me sad is the provincialism of the current leadership figures,” he says, adding, referring to the current poll numbers: “That’s not the SPD. If I had been at 15 percent, I would have resigned immediately.”
The Chancellor wants to congratulate the former Chancellor
Schröder survived a party expulsion process. And after some discussions last year, he was honored like every other member for 60 years of party membership. Old companions such as former Interior Minister Otto Schily, ex-party leader Gabriel and the only active SPD federal politician, Matthias Miersch, deputy chairman of the Bundestag faction from Hanover, came to the celebration in Hanover. The guest list for the 80th birthday party is still being kept under wraps. “My wife invited friends,” says Schröder. “I don’t know which one, and I don’t know anything about a conceivable program. I just know that it’s taking place in Berlin.”
It will also be interesting to see who else will congratulate you. At the end of February, when asked by journalists at the dpa editorial conference in chief whether he would congratulate Schröder, Chancellor Scholz said simply: “Sure.” And what does his congratulatory letter say? “I don’t write them that early.”